The Year 1948 and After

The year 1948 brought about radical political changes. The Communist seizure of power in Czechoslovakia had a major impact on the fate of the villa, which was assigned to be an "apartment villa". In 1951, František Müller died of carbon monoxide poisoning while stoking the villa's furnace. The Müllers' only daughter, Eva, decided to emigrate, leaving her mother alone in the house. In 1955, through a decision of the Regional National Committee for Prague 6, the villa became the property of the state, used in part as a depository for the applied-art collections of the National Gallery in Prague. In 1959, the villa was definitively seized; Milada Müllerová was assigned two rooms and a bath, using the former boudoir and library as her residence. The remaining sections of the villa became the offices for the national textbook company, State Pedagogical Publishing. In her last years, Milada Müllerová put almost superhuman efforts into working to save the villa, and requested the Swiss architects Frank Gloor, Rolf Gutmann and Felix Schwarz to prepare a plan for creating an Adolf Loos Centre in the Villa Müller.

For the future fate of the villa, it was fortunate that the personal collections of Milada and František Müller were purchased by state museums and galleries, as were the personal effects of Milada Müllerová herself after her death on 8 September 1968.
One month later, on 15 October 1968, the Villa Müller was declared a cultural heritage site of Czechoslovakia.

The key turning point in the protection of this architectural monument was the ruling by the Prague City Council of 26 January 1995, approving the purchase of the five-eighths ownership share held in the villa by Eva Maternová, daughter of Milada and František Müller, to ownership by the City of Prague, with professional administration of the object entrusted to the City of Prague Museum. Restoration of the villa started in 1998.